Isabel Gonzalez, 2, of Manhattan and her dad, Ruben Gonzalez, wait in line for a ride May 12 at Playland Amusement Park in Rye. / Tania Savayan/The Journal News

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Sustainable Playland’s promising plan to reinvent Westchester’s amusement park could invigorate the historic venue as a destination for county families. It also could provide an unintended tax bonanza for the City of Rye, Rye schools and Westchester County itself.

Noreen Whitty, the Rye city assessor with a reputation for putting tax-exempt properties on the tax rolls, says she’ll take a close look at County Executive Rob Astorino’s privatization plan for the park, with an eye for making part of it taxable land.

The tax issue could loom large as Astorino pursues what would be one of his administration’s crowning achievements. Sustainable Playland aims to make the park more attractive to Westchester County residents in general and Sound shore families in particular, who drive their kids as far as Mount Vernon or Darien, Conn., in search of indoor field space and compete for local fields to play soccer, lacrosse, field hockey and football.

The new Playland will be financed, and run, by private organizations in its transformation to a four-season destination expected to triple annual revenue to as much as $32 million a year, Sustainable Playland President Dhruv Narain told residents at a community meeting.

Its private operating partners plan to invest $25 million, creating a youth-sports complex with three fields and an indoor fieldhouse, and a mini-water park. They will make improvements at the Ice Casino, open restaurants and create a great lawn by the shoreline. About 70 percent of the amusement rides will remain, including the historic Dragon Coaster, and a slew of rides for younger children. But the “thrill rides” popular with teens will vanish.

The private partners will pay rent to Sustainable Playland, the Rye-based nonprofit whose board includes top Wall Street finance professionals who live in Rye.

The nonprofit, in turn, will pay Westchester County $1.2 million a year, which will cover part of the park’s annual debt service of $3 million, for which county taxpayers remain on the hook. A one-time payment of up to $4 million from Sustainable Playland would help close the $86 million gap in Astorino’s 2013 budget.

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Rye has emerged as a leader in challenging the use of tax-exempt property by profit-making companies. In 2010, the city won a 13-year battle with The Osborn retirement community, which put part of its property on the rolls. Whitty’s slugging it out in state Supreme Court over the taxable status of two restaurants that have enjoyed tax-exempt status because they’re situated in public parks: Playland’s Pier Restaurant and Tiki Bar, and Seaside Johnnies in Rye Town Park.

Rye valued the Tiki Bar at $1.5 million, worth $26,000 in annual property taxes to the city, county and schools. The county, which receives $30,000 a year in rent and 5 percent of the restaurant’s proceeds, has sued. The Tiki Bar ruling could determine what happens at Playland.

Property-tax exemption fights have broken out at Westchester County Airport as well, where three private fixed-base operators, which house private planes, don’t pay property taxes on their private hangers.

However, Signature Flight Support gets taxed, and recently challenged Rye town’s assessment, which yields an estimated $800,000 to $900,000 a year in taxes. The operator of Westchester’s Glen Island Casino, in the county’s Glen Island Park, has a beef, too: He challenged New Rochelle’s valuation of $11.6 million, which comes with a tax bite of about $350,000.

“We’ll have to look at the Playland lease agreement, or the license agreement, to see what it calls for,” Whitty said. “If it’s a commercial, privately run use, it should be taxable. It would be unfair to the rest of the taxpayers to have a private operation not pay taxes on county land.”

Disagreeing are Astorino and Sustainable Playland’s “asset manager,” Doug Biederman, a pioneer in the field of privately funded and operated public open space. Biederman, of Chappaqua, has led public-private partnerships in New York City, including the Bryant Park Corp., which helped reinvent, and now manages, Bryant Park on West 42nd Street. In the 1970s, the park had become a midtown eyesore. Today Bryant Park, with its restaurants and cafes, can attract up to 5,000 on sunny summer afternoons.

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Biederman scoffed at Whitty’s suggestion that the Playland partners would be liable for property taxes. Since his group started working on the plan in fall 2010, the county never raised the tax issue, he said.

“I think it’s flat wrong,” he said. “They are already going to pay concession fees. It would shock me if they ended up also having to pay property taxes.”

Biederman recalls the experience establishing what has become a popular cafe in Bryant Park.

“A key part of our marketing was that there would be no real estate taxes on the ongoing operations,” he said.

At issue at Playland will be the details of the contracts that govern the privatization deal, which already have stirred county legislators to cry foul. Astorino last week signed a letter of intent to develop an “asset management agreement” with Sustainable Playland, which county officials say differs from a “lease” or “license,” and puts the plan outside of the legislature’s purview.

All this will have to be parsed out as Astorino proceeds with the ambitious plan. Whitty, meanwhile, awaits in Rye to analyze the final deal.